1. Optimize your practice website for patient experience

pristol pharmaceuticals

Today more than ever, potential patients are searching on the web for local physicians and healthcare services.

Patients are taking their health into their own hands and by doing so care more and more about establishing a know, like, and trust relationship with a potential practice before walking through the doors or booking an appointment.

Improving your patient’s experience on your website will significantly increase patient leads and retention.

Your website design should have customized features, fast page speed, be mobile-friendly, and be interactive.

A. Designed for Mobile Devices

Most searches are done via mobile or tablet devices, so having a fully responsive medical website design is crucial.

Check out this primary care client example. You can see the menu, a clear call to action, and what they do all above the fold on mobile load.

Make sure your website design includes flexible images and website structures.

The practice website should be built for all platforms, so you capture the maximum number of website visitors and not just limited to desktop searches.

Page speed can be the #1 reason for a high bounce rate for your medical website.

pristol pharmaceuticals website page speed is 99% .

B. Speed Matters

Slow website page speed will irritate your online users and deter them from staying on your website.

Websites that are difficult to navigate with slow page speed will give potential patients a negative experience.

A negative experience makes users more likely to leave your website to go to a competitor’s. It is critical to evaluate and put a plan together to improve website page speed to lower bounce rates and increase lead conversion.

C. Make Treatments & Services Visible

Layout practice treatments and services on the practice homepage.

When patients are visiting your practice website, they should find all your services and treatments quickly if your medical practice offers a wide variety of services down select to the main procedures and services that you want to feature.

When deciding on what treatments to promote, think of your ideal audience, key differentiators, and high revenue procedures.

Use lead forms to make it easy for patients to request appointments and to create a call to action for high revenue services.

Lead forms a big for driving leads in your medical marketing strategy.

When designing lead forms on the website, make sure they are accessible and straightforward. Patients don’t want to fill out long and unnecessary forms to schedule an appointment.

Your practice website needs to be built with proper medical SEO and keywords.

To stay competitive and show up in search results, your website design needs to have all the essential keywords and proper SEO structure.

A top-performing website will have a solid SEO and keywords at the foundation of the website design.

Search engine optimization will be built page by page for all aspects of the website through image optimization, accurate meta descriptions, H tags, page structures, and more.

A medical SEO expert will spend their time building out each page of your practice website and do competitive keyword research to make sure your site is on top of local search results.

2. Invest in Social Media Marketing for Doctors

Social media marketing is an essential part of great medical marketing strategies and will help you share content and reach your ideal patient base.

Social media marketing for doctors is a massive contributor to driving traffic to your medical or dental practice website and search engine rankings.

Social media will help medical marketing strategies reach a broad audience and can be used as a critical lead generation tool.

Utilize the available analytics tools that social media platforms provide to track your efforts and modify the social media marketing campaigns for your dental practice.

Did you know that Instagram analytics will tell you exactly what times of day your followers are most active?

That is a BIG advantage for optimizing exactly when to post to ensure the highest level of visibility.

Not all social media platforms are alike, and not all social media is a good fit for your medical practice. Each healthcare social media marketing platform is different and created for a specific audience.

Take the time to evaluate the social media profiles that are the best fit for the medical marketing of the practice based on the target audience and the makeup of the audience that each platform targets.

Check out the age demographics in the graph below for the major social media platforms. What age do you target?

You do not want to waste precious time and energy on profiles that don’t reach your audience. Instagram tends to be a great fit for marketing a plastic surgery practice, aesthetics, or dermatology marketing; however, Instagram may not be an excellent fit for urology practice marketing.

To be successful for medical marketing for doctors on social media, you need to be:

• Consistent and organized
• Optimized properly
• Interactive
• Regular Posting
• Contain unique images and content for your practice
• Create consistent brand continuity
• Share content that drives patients to your website

If you are investing in video content, here are some fantastic Youtube SEO tips to keep in mind when posting new videos.

3. Develop a local search engine optimization strategy

Medical marketing for doctors has gone local.

That means that you need to invest time and energy into ranking your website in the 15-20 mile radius around each location for your practice.

A big thing is if you want to rank for it locally. YOU NEED A PAGE FOR IT.

That is a very dumb down version as to say you need well structured and optimized pages for each of our core treatment and services pages.

Take a look at this orthopedic client that we handle medical marketing strategies and local SEO for.

We optimized their orthopedic urgent care page to be well structured and contain local ranking signals such as “Knoxville” on the page.

As a result, they are ranking #1 in search results, and it is one of the top organic traffic generating pages on their website.

Here are some essential tips to remember when creating or optimizing new pages on your website for SEO.

Another critical medical marketing tip for local SEO is to make sure you have individual pages for each location.

If you are a multi-location medical practice, develop a landing page for each dedicated location that you have.

Make sure you include the following items on the page:

• Google My Business map
• The city name in the title tag and on the page several times
• NAP – name, address, phone number, hours of that specific location
• Providers that see patients at that location
• A short write up about that location.

Follow these local SEO tips, and you will be on your way to outranking your local providers in search, which is key to a successful medical marketing strategy.

4. Correct your provider profile listings

Business listings have a significant impact on medical marketing and SEO for doctors.

Your business listings are the business contact information that displays when patients search for you online.

It’s vital to claim, verify, and optimize your business listings across all platforms.

Uniform business listings across all platforms inform Google that the information displayed about your medical practice is accurate.

The more directories and reviews sites that contain the same business information give Google additional confidence to return your data over a competitor’s practice.

Just take a look at the above pie chart.

Citations (a.k.a. business listings) at in the top 5 most important local ranking factors for search.

Popular business listings platforms are Google, Yelp, and Facebook, but there are multiple smaller listing sites that are important to your reputation.

However, do not forget that unlike other industries, in medical marketing, providers also have profiles, and patients search for these as well.

Often, physicians move several times over their careers, which can cause errors and discrepancies in their listings.

It is essential to update and unify listings for your doctors as well.

This will help strengthen your visibility for searches like “orthopedic surgeon near me”.

5. Have an active content marketing strategy

Medical marketing for doctors relies on a solid healthcare content marketing strategy. Content marketing increases your overall website traffic, grows organic search, improves brand awareness, and positions you as a thought leader in your specialty.

A well structured, well-performing blog can and should generate up to 50% of a websites organic traffic.

Take a look at a women’s health client we have in Atlanta.

That is the power of content marketing in your overall medical marketing strategies.

Leverage data at the center of your content marketing strategies.

You can use free tools like Ubersuggest to punch in keywords for topics you want to write about.

It will tell you things like:

• Keyword volume
• Backlinks
• Top pages ranking for that keyword.

You can use this information to ensure you are writing about topics people are searching for and take a look at that is already ranking well and make sure you write a more detailed post.

Also, remember that when it comes to medical marketing and content, blog posts are not the only format!

There are dozens of types of engaging content that you can develop to attract and engage patients.

Video is one of our personal favorites.

6. Email is still a viable medical marketing strategy

Stay in front of your patients and website visitors with email marketing! Email as part of your medical marketing strategy is a great way to retarget patients or reach new patients that have expressed interest in a particular procedure or treatment.

Utilize email marketing to create touchpoints with your practice website visitors and share new promotions, specials, blog posts, and the latest practice news. Grow your practice patient email list by encouraging website visitors to sign up for a newsletter.

A newsletter will help you share monthly content about your medical practice and keep your practice in front of mind for patients.

Another powerful way to leverage email as part of your medical marketing strategy is by creating nurture sequences for your lead generation campaigns.

We have a saying here at Pristol , “you paid for them, nurture them!”.

7. Generate new patient reviews

Patient reviews are one of the top 3 most important local SEO factors when it comes to local search rankings.

Let’s go back to this graph again.

You will see reviews are listed at a close 3rd BUT considering that Google My Business is 1st and reviews are a top-ranking factor for GMB; I believe it to be a #1 or #2 most crucial medical marketing strategy to improve local SEO.

Studies have shown that 68% of potential patients form an opinion about your medical practice, and it’s physicians with as little as five reviews.

When choosing between two providers, a patient is 91% more likely to select the provider with higher reviews!

That is a huge deal. 9/10 patients will pick your competitor if your reputation is bad online.

What does this mean? Patient reviews are an essential way to convert potential patients and a huge reflection of your medical practice reputation.

When it comes to medical marketing strategies generating positive patient reviews needs to be at the top of the list!

We recommend leveraging technology to makes sure you succeed with generating reviews.

 

8. Start creating videos with your providers

Video content created by your physicians is one of the most powerful and engaging ways to content with potential patients.

Video medical marketing helps physicians and medical practices reach potential patients and easily market themselves.

Video now receives substantially higher engagement rates than any other type of content, including images and blog posts.

On top of that, Youtube is owned by Google and is the second largest search engine online.

Giving you another avenue for search growth for your practice to pursue.

Building a video content marketing strategy will help you, as the doctor promote your practices, talk specifically about medical conditions and your treatment approach and create a know, like and trust relationship with potential patients before they ever walk through the door.

If you are struggling to come up with topics or ideas for your first round of videos, we recommend starting with the low handing fruit: patient FAQs.

Think about it…

As a physician, you probably get asked hundreds of questions per month by your patients.

Just jot those down, and I can guarantee you could very quickly come up with six months worth of topics.

The great thing is…you know people are wondering about this!

I highly recommend you get on the video training as part of your medical marketing for doctors.

9. Create procedure based content that relates to patients

Sharing high quality before and after pictures of actual patient results can be one of the single most important medical marketing strategies, a practice that provides aesthetics services can do.

When it comes to plastic surgery marketing, before and after photos are an absolute must in your medical marketing strategy.

Develop a large before and after gallery showcasing multiple examples of successful patient’s before and after for various surgical procedures and age ranges.

If your medical specialty is not cosmetic based consider working with a patient that is willing to share their treatment journey as a case study for your practice.

Or even film for procedures from the operating room (with patient consent, of course).

Check out this video from our client Tim Tollestrup. He specialized in peripheral nerve surgery. This video is on his Piriformis Syndrome surgery.

It is his top-performing video with 21,000 views, and it is on an actual patient surgery. People eat this stuff up nowadays.

Many potential patients are continually seeking the best treatments for medical conditions and improving their quality of life.

Sharing successful patient stories and educating the online visitors of your experience and expertise will turn online visitors into real patients.

This can be a highly successful part of your medical marketing strategy if done correctly.

Need more tips on how to rank treatment, services and conditions pages high in search results? Check out this video.

10. Generate leads with Google Ads and Social Ads

The digital advertising space is highly competitive but essential for driving leads and generating new patients for high revenue procedures.

Digital advertising has various platforms, but the most popular being, Google Ads and Facebook ads.

These platforms are the heavy hitters when it comes to digital advertising for medical practices. Both Search Ads and Facebook Ads Manager have their advantages for targeting potential patients.

Search based ads allow you to target specific keywords in search and present ads to those people in a particular geographical area if you outbid competitors.

Above is a sample of search ads for a client we do mental health marketing for that is a psychiatrist in Manhattan.

We were focusing on bringing in new telepsychiatry clients for them during COVID.

Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create highly specific audiences to present ads based on the data Facebook ad pulled from their personal profiles.

Above is a sample of an ad from a women’s health clinic focusing on driving in new menopause consultations.

We took into consideration things such as age, geography, and interests when targeting our ads.

Therefore, we were able to target only those people that best fit our client’s potential patient base of a specific procedure we are promoting.

Digital advertising has revolutionized the medical marketing industry with platforms like Facebook and Google Ads.

Both PPC and Facebook advertising allows you to customize your advertisement to reach your exact potential patient base and provide specific tracking and analytics to gain great insights into the success of the advertising program.

Not only can you customize your medical practice ads but also monitor the ROI.

Analytics will help you adjust the ads to improve results based on data that has been received.

Digital advertising can be interactive and allows potential patients to engage with advertisements making it easier to capture contact information and convert leads.

Not only can you use digital advertising to drive in new leads and conversions, but you can also use it to boost your organic reach.

Google Ads and Facebook advertising are considerable drivers in converting new patients, growing high revenue procedures, and increasing overall practice revenue.

11. Grow new patient referrals through physician outreach

Physician referrals can be the lifeline of a medical practice, so developing a physician liaison marketing program is essential for sustaining strong doctor referral relationships.

Successful medical marketing for doctors will include efforts to expand your healthcare network and increasing patient growth.

Physician liaison marketing is hiring a representative for your practice to meet with local referring doctors and medical practices to increase patient referrals for the practice.

As the physician relations representative, they extend the bridge of communication between referring doctors and their medical practice.

Referral outreach can result in a significant increase in patient referrals and overall practice growth.

Physician liaison marketing is especially an excellent fit for hospitals, surgeons, and specialty medical practices because their patient base is majority referrals from general practitioners.

Other medical practices can significantly benefit from having a physician relations manager to help grow their healthcare network and meet with local physicians.

Benefits of a Physician Liaison Program:

• Skilled physician liaison representative to promote the practice
• Connects medical practice and doctors with referring physicians
• Helps introduce new physicians to the healthcare community
• It provides a way to streamline referrals for primary care providers easily.
• Accessible point of contact for referring doctors for questions, concerns, or any other needs
• Marketing director for practice
• Increases patient referrals
• Increases high revenue procedures
• Increases overall practice revenue
• Track visits and builds the physician’s network
• Provides physician referral analytics
• Evaluates practice growth and creates a marketing strategy
• Easy to track success and ROI

Learn about our online physician liaison training program Physician Liaison University™.

12. Depend on marketing analytics to make decisions

Understanding the medical marketing efforts that are most effective for your medical practice requires proper tracking and data and analytics reports.

Tracking and analytics will give you a fully comprehensive report on the progress of the medical marketing for your practice.

With tracking and analytics, you can target and re-invest in the marketing efforts that have proven successful.

We recommend utilizing software or CRM that provides marketing attribution so you can not only track how patients got into your funnel but see all their points of interaction that caused them to convert ultimately.

Google Data Studio is also a powerful, free option to create visual dashboards.

Author: Justin Knott

CEO – Intrepy Healthcare Marketing